Dramatic suspense romance kicks off new series from Megan Erickson

ETA: Right, I love Megan Erickson’s work, especially the Cyberlove Series with Santino Hassell. I’ve also enjoyed her MF stories, particularly her recent paranormal Blood Guard and The Gamers Series (a mix of MF/MM).

This one’s a romantic suspense thriller type hacker adventure. The tag line of The Fast and the Furious meeting Mr Robot’s not far wrong. But I wasn’t as enamoured of this one as I have been with others.

Roarke is all alpha male and there’s a lot of “you can’t do this because you’re a woman” tropes sent towards Wren. In this instance it’s because he’s always been in love with her but thinks he’s not worthy, but I find the back and fro-ing between two people who both fancy the pants off each other to be really annoying, no matter how well written.

This is, in essence, a revenge story with a romance attached to it, and while the romance was a fairly slow burn, the hacktivist part of the book did work well to an extent.

There was never really any explanation given for how a team of hackers and (essentially geeks) doing jobs like investigating dodgy companies and looking into criminal activity computer trails, also ended up with shit hot weapons skills.

I liked the banter between the team though. There was another strong female character in Marisol and Wren herself wasn’t a pushover, although again there was too much of the “I want him but I can’t have him” arsing about for my liking.

There’s also second hidden secret missions involving the same targets and the – lack of communication leading to mistakes and mix-ups – is another trope which needs handling with care. I get why authors use the “lone gun” element and, in this instance, it mostly paid off.

The ending sets up the rest of the series and I am looking forward to finding out more about the rest of the crew and I believe there’s at least two others planned (another MF and an MM).

#ARC received from the publishers via NetGalley in return for an honest and unbiased review